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Dendrology Demystified

A Tree Tutorial

by D. Glenn Miller

Photos by W.D. Sterrett, W.D. Brush, and J.P.  Wentling courtesy of USDA-NRCS Plants Database

 

Trees are an amazing resource.  Like other things that are wonderful gifts, we too often take them for granted.  It's understandable, I suppose, because they're just there. They live and grow quietly, keeping to themselves and putting on age and dignity while we're busy living our own lives. 

 

I had to clear an area for a new garden recently and there was a white ash along the north edge of the piece.  It was borderline as far as interfering with the garden was concerned but I took the tree anyway, mostly for selfish reasons.  It wasn’t especially sizable, only about 9 inches in diameter at breast height.  But as it turns out the darned thing was around 120 years old.  That means it began its life only about 28 years after Henry David Thoreau had died, just to give some perspective. 

 

I reflected on that little ash tree a bit after cutting it, much to the concern of my partner in crime.  A small section of the stump became something of a fixture on the kitchen table.  There was the small lamp I’d pulled up next to it, and a sewing needle stuck into the bark.  The needle is one I’d gotten out of the medicine cabinet and the same one we use to extract splinters from our hands, often splinters from trees older than this ash.  In this case the needle was for pointing to and keeping track of the rings as I counted.   

 

The selfish reason for taking that ash tree was for heat.  Ash has the unfortunate (for the tree’s sake) distinction of being quick to season.  So when the fuelwood supply for winter starts looking lean, the ash trees in the woodlot begin to get special attention.  I like to think they can’t feel me eyeing them that way but sometimes I wonder. 

 

Some Technicalities

 

It would probably be good to get some basics out of the way, so here goes.  Dendrology is essentially the study of woody trees, shrubs and vines.  And dendrologists divide North American trees into two major groups.  Pines, spruces, cedars and the like (generally conifers or cone-bearing trees) do not bear true flowers and they form one group.  The rest—often called broadleaved trees—are trees like oaks and hickories that produce true flowers.  The flowers aren’t necessarily showy and conspicuous, as are those of the dogwood tree for example, but they are nonetheless true flowers.

 

When it comes to technical features in tree identification a fairly painless way to ease into it is by observing a trait that is often pretty straightforward to see.  Broadleaved trees can have an alternate branching pattern with alternate leaves, or an opposite branching pattern with opposite leaves.  It turns out that only a relative few have the opposite pattern.  The vast majority of broadleaved tree species are alternate.  So, by the process of elimination, if the tree in question has the opposite pattern this narrows down the field enormously.

   

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